Freedom and Polydeterminism
in Cultural Criticism

Rudi Supek

Rudi Supek, professor of sociology at the Faculty of Philosophy, Zagreb,
Yugoslavia, has written on such contemporary issues as Existentialism
and Decadence, The Psychology of Bourgeois Poetry, Public
Opinion Research, and Youth on the Road of Fraternity. He was born in Zagreb in 1913 and received a doctor's degree
in psychology in Paris in 1953.

Culture is very likely one of
the most sensitive areas of social criticism. Nowhere else can the inadequacy
or absurdity of theoretical presuppositions or methodological procedures be
uncovered so rapidly, nowhere else can human creative activity overwhelm erroneous
premises and conclusions with such promptitude, and nowhere else can such harm
be inflicted upon the creative potentialities of human beings as when a dogmatic
theory is imposed on cultural policy by means of social compulsion. Hence, we
are going to dwell for a moment on certain aspects of cultural criticism in
contemporary Marxism, pointing out bow the erroneous use of certain cognitional
categories has led to wholly distorted theoretical conclusions. The creative
nature of man, the mode of human participation in social life, the relationship
between the collective élan and individual creative potentialities,
the establishment of certain social limitations on creativity, and individual
ability to overcome personal and social limitations in the service of one and
the same ideal, are all most prominent in the field of culture. It is precisely
in the realm of culture in our times that the contradiction between society
and the individual, between the collective consciousness and the individual
consciousness, and between the concrete totality represented by society and
the ideal totality represented by the individual, begins to sharpen in the most
obvious way.

We have just encountered, in
the concept of totality, the first category that is a source of
certain ambiguities and onesided interpretations in social criticism.

This category is interpreted
in the social sciences generally, and in sociology in particular, in terms of
the concept of society as such, either in the spirit of ontological realism
or in the spirit of ontological nominalism. Society in the former
sense is some sort of higher, organic, and closed entity to which the individual
is subordinated in every respect; society in the latter sense is no more than
a chance accumulation, an aggregation of interests, or the locale in which individual
wills and interests are operative (or join together, or compete, or struggle).
Both concepts have deeply permeated the thought, philosophy, and sociology of
bourgeois society. While classic liberalism (Smith, Hobbes, Bentham) held to
nominalism, romantic philosophy interpreted society and the people in the light
of ontological realism. The latter conception thus carried over from Hegel and
Schelling to the theoreticians of the “folk soul” (Lazarus and Steinthal) and
organic positivism (Comte, Spencer, Durkheim) and thence to the most recent
totalitarian doctrines of the fascist and Stalinist varieties.

However, on this occasion we
will treat only certain theories in the realm of culture, and in particular
the Marxist application of the category of totality to the interpretation of
culture and cultural policy. In this field, we must face up to three well‑known
conceptions in the spirit of ontological realism, which involve the complete
subordination of the creative individual to the social totality.

The first conception in this
series falls within the range of theory of reflection. By analogy
with the reflection of “objective reality” in the subject, this theory assumes
that the cultural superstructure is only a reflection of the material foundation
of society, with the entire “social reality” being considered as something more
real and more primary in terms of value and with cultural creation being regarded
as nothing but a more or less adapted reflection of reality proper. This theory
falls back on the Platonist idealization of “objective reality” and affirms
the inferiority of culture and the art that can only reflect (not to say imitate)
this reality. Art necessarily lags behind reality. The best compliment that
art can possibly receive is that it has succeeded in conveying an impression
of social reality “as faithfully as possible” or “as characteristically as possible.”
Cultural creation, along with the whole realm of esthetics, thus becomes in
ontological terms just an epiphenomenon of material reality.

Within the hounds of historical
dynamics, the material social foundation becomes something not only objective
but also causative, the cultural superstructure being something subjective and
consequential. Since the social and political correlative of the material foundation
is in the ruling class, culture is always the spiritual expression of a single
class. When the foundation changes, the superstructure also changes. When the
foundation disappears, the superstructure likewise disappears. Culture thus
retains the characteristic features of an epiphenomenon, even when the inverse
effect of the superstructure on the foundation is mentioned out of respect for
the dialectic. It is important in a methodological sense at this point to keep
in mind that the foundation and the superstructure are the correlatives of
the same historical entity. The cultural superstructure in this view, thus
remains closed within the bounds of a given foundation and incapable of transcending
this foundation in any way, i.e., incapable of shifting to another historical
epoch in terms of value.

Such a grasp of the whole, or
totality, of a given historical situation leads to certain consequences in the
theory of culture. First, the search is on for the class correlatives or “social
equivalents” of particular cultural themes and artistic styles. Second, attempts
are made to explain changes in cultural creation exclusively in the light
of changes in the social foundation.

The theory of the progressive
and decadent development of society as an historical entity is our second
example of the erroneous application of the category of totality. This theory
is really just a subvariety of the first, which introduces the ideas of the
progressive and decadent development of particular phases into the relationship
between the foundation and the superstructure. By applying the foundation‑superstructure
scheme onesidedly to the realm of culture, this theory projects the political
and social decadency of a society onto cultural creativity. To be sure, this
theory soon encounters certain small difficulties. It cannot explain why the
most valuable cultural achievements have so often been produced in such decadent
epochs as the Athenian era after Pericles, the Roman era after Caesar, and the
Middle Ages after Dante, not to mention the decadence that is supposed to have
set in with the appearance of impressionism in bourgeois society.

This theory has also created
another difficulty by introducing a purely gnosiological criterion alongside
the historical criterion of progress and decadence. Under the theory of reflection,
the progressive is that which is more objective or realistic and the decadent
that which provides a more subjective reflection, i.e., a reflection which is
subjectivistic or expressionistic. The gnosiological criterion being lasting
and unalterable, realism must necessarily be progressive and impressionism or
expressionism decadent or even reactionary, the latter art forms being expressions
of a subjectivistic attitude toward reality. From Lukács to Timofeev, the theoreticians
of socialist realism have confused historical dynamics with the postulates of
cognitional theory that are otherwise applicable only to scientific cognition.
It is a genuine riddle to them why the revolutionary bourgeoisie expressed itself
at one time in a pronouncedly subjectivistic art and the revolutionary proletariat
during the time of the October Revolution likewise made use of a subjectivistic
art in the expressionism of Mayakovsky, Piscator, Meyerhold, and so many others.
The “cultural superstructure” obviously fails completely to respect certain
of the fundamental principles of the theory of reflection. How else are we to
explain the fact that the bourgeoisie expressed itself in a romantic and subjectivistic
manner during its progressive phase, with realism making an appearance only
by the time of the first serious social crisis after 1848 as a symptom of crisis
and thereby of the beginning of decline?

If we assume that decadence
set in immediately after the era of realism in painting and literature, i.e.,
with the appearance of impressionism and naturalism, then the only conclusion
to be drawn is that every further cultural creation so long as this decadence
lasts (a whole century thus far!) will amount to one step further into decadency.
Expressionism will be more decadent than impressionism, surrealism more decadent
than expressionism, and nonobjective or abstract art the extreme mode of decadence.
The longer the decadence lasts, the more profound will be the decline in values,
and the greater the dehumanization. For these reasons, the more recent cultural
achievements of bourgeois society will always be less acceptable than the older
achievements, which are then transformed into “the classics.” In this way, so
far as the cultural inheritance is concerned, the theory leads to traditionalism
and to the sole acceptance of old and outmoded cultural values. Such an orientation
in relation to the cultural inheritance in a socialist society must necessarily
“go always against the stream and against the era” and make fresh forces old
before their time.

We have already pointed out
that this theory leads to a variety of difficulties in the interpretation of
cultural dynamics and often to absurd conclusions. And the adherents to this
theory themselves frequently contradict each other. Lukács thus considers that
bourgeois art was progressive only during its earliest phase, e.g., in the Flemish
landscapes, and then fell into decadence with the onset of romanticism (even
though the latter amounted to a “French revolution in poetic form”!) On the
other hand, the idea is much more common (shared alike by Plekhanov, Hausenstein,
and Hamann) that decadence set in with the appearance of impressionism, through
which “the petty bourgeoisie attained its culminating position.” Plekhanov nevertheless
noted the joyous aspect of this art and considered it to belong to the society
of the future by virtue of its hedonist unconcern. On this basis, the Soviet
theoretician Matsa has been impelled to doubt that impressionism is decadent
art and to ascribe the beginning of decadence to expressionism, which “deforms
the external world.” As we have already seen, the question then arises as to
how the October Revolution could have been echoed in expressionism. The answer
is simple. The shout, the cry, the slogan, and the directive are always going
to be compact in the expressionistic mode like action itself, for narration
is unfeasible in the course of the action. Yet such an uncomplicated psychological
explanation is not accepted by the adherents to socialist realism. To be sure,
there have been some recent attempts to consider nonobjective art alone as genuinely
decadent art. This opinion has been expressed by the Soviet critic Lifshits
on only one occasion but seems to be acquiring a multitude of adherents, although
it has not yet become “official.”

The theory of reification
is our third example of the erroneous application of the category
of totality in the field of culture. Much more subtle than the others, this
theory has attracted large numbers of contemporary Marxists, for it undeniably
contains a fragment of the truth. The weak side of this theory is its historical
relativism, conditional upon the enclosure of the cultural‑historical
situation within the bounds of a specific totality.

Like the other theories, the theory of reification lays stress
on the foundation, i.e., on the economic relationships or modes of production
in capitalist society. We know that the idea of reification means to Lukács
what Marx termed “the fetishism of commodities”—the idea that the value of a
particular commodity is to be regarded as its objective characteristic, devoid
of any specific social relation created by value itself. Reification occurs
in such a way that concrete individual labor is transformed into an abstract
amount of labor, the amount that can be considered socially necessary. The latter
is no more than an abstraction from the former, and amounts to the reduction
of an original qualitative unity to a quantitative continuum determined by value
or price. The process of reification thus consists essentially of the transformation
of qualitative relations into quantitative magnitudes. The roots of reification
naturally lie in a whole conglomeration of secondary phenomena that are inseparable
from a system of hired labor, e.g., the reduction of the workingmen to a bare
work force, the separation of the producers from their products and from the
means of production, the determination of the value or prices of goods through
the haphazard effect of the capitalist market relations that amount to a force
outside man and raised above man's will, and in sum the entire goods‑and‑money
and technical-utilitarian superstructure of the capitalist economy (particularly
in its liberalistic and prestatist form).

The process of reification amounts
to the foundation of bourgeois society in so far as the creation of market values
is concerned, and must inevitably be generalized or reflected in the superstructure
of this society, in science, philosophy, law, morals, and art. Just as the capitalist
mode of production has a tendency to expand and gradually to overwhelm all areas
of social production, so also does consciousness as the reflection of this process
come gradually to imbue all such fields. Since Marx, Max Weber and George Lukács,
and recently Erich Fromm and Lucien Goldmann have been particularly insistent
on the fact that goods‑and‑money production is not only the configuration
of the economy in a bourgeois society but also the “soul” of such a society.
Usefulness, profit, money, quantification, rationalism, and instrumentalism
have thus saturated all realms of social life and thought. Rationalism along
with science in this same circle has become the enemy of humanism, instrumentalism
along with technology the chief source of human alienation. Likewise, mass production
entails mass consumption and is the main source of the other‑than‑human
or “artificial” needs that are generated by means of advertising and with the
lure of false social prestige, as Erich Fromm has pointed out. Rather than assuming
reification to be the sole or fundamental process operative in bourgeois society,
to be sure, Fromm adds the dimension of the human personality.

In fact, the application of
the category of totality in the social criticism of bourgeois society under
the theory of reification does not go beyond the dependence of the superstructure
upon the foundation, i.e., the dependence of the social totality upon a universal
process termed reification, so far as the essential determinism of social
phenomena is concerned. The starting point is an historically closed system,
viz., bourgeois society, the analysis of which comes down to a kind of phenomenological
reductionism of delusive phenomena to a fundamental and essential process of
change. No determinism capable of transcending this particular historical situation
has been taken into consideration, either as a preceding series or as a future
series.

In what manner ought these theories
to be subjected to correction?

First, it is necessary to transcend
social, economic, class, cultural, and historical totalitarianism, and thus
relativism in two senses, viz., in individual or personal terms, and in terms
of world history. In the first instance, the category of social totality deserves
to be interpreted in relation to “total social facts” (Marx, Mauss, Gurvitch).
Let us recall no more than the following definition from Marx: “Hence, however
much a human being should be a separate individuum, and it is precisely
his separateness which makes him an individuum and an actual individual being
in the community, he is likewise a totality, the ideal totality, the subjective
existence of an imagined and experienced society in itself, just as he exists
in actuality at the same time as the perception and genuine spirit of social
existence and as the totality of the human manifestation of life.” (Karl Marx,
Der historische Materialismus [Leipzig: A. Kroener Verlag], Vol. I, p.
298.)

Obviously, Marx has kept in
mind the fact that both society and the personality are “total social facts”;
i.e., the whole social reality can be encompassed if we proceed from the one
to the other and vice versa. This reciprocity of perspective is based in any
event on a dialectical relationship that imparts full independence to the personality
in the sense of an ability to identify with any other personality in the society
(any reduction of the art of a given artist to his class origins being thus
illusory), and an ability to identify with the entire society as a whole (to
transcend in consciousness narrower class or group interests), and an ability
to transcend the present‑day state of society—to anticipate the future
as the “totality of the human manifestation of life,” not only in the name of
the negation of that which is in existence, but also in the name of the entire
historical experience of mankind. Positivistic organicism is not only incapable
of comprehending the role of the personality in cultural creativity, but also
finds geniuses to be an enigma. No less a figure than Lukács himself
naïvely explains the survival of works of genius solely in terms of selection
on the part of the ruling class from whatever in the past should serve the immediate
interests of this class! In point of fact, great cultural works live on despite
all barriers of history and class for the sole reason that such works have been
created by personalities distinguished for greatness or genius, i.e., such individualized
social totalities as have encompassed a maximum of “human totality” in a personal
creative act. The limitations of class and history that affect every creative
personality—even those of the greatest genius—cannot affect the cultural and
human values of a great work. Such a work reflects the constant endeavor of
the individuum as the “ideal totality of society” to penetrate and express the
essential aspects of human existence in terms of duration in space and time.
The result is always limited but on a universal human scale, for man as creator
is always outgrowing himself through his work, and not only himself but also
the concrete mankind that he represents.

In other words, the individual
represents a specific determinant of cultural creation precisely because as
an individual he deserves to be a part of the analysis of the culture of a society.
For example, in terms of the universal process of reification it is wholly incomprehensible
why romanticism should have ignored the processes of reification while the realism
that followed with Balzac did not ignore these processes. Was it only because
romanticism was “more reactionary” or less progressive than realism, or was
it because the romantics as human beings were less progressive than the realists
(e.g., Victor Hugo as opposed to Balzac)?

The answer to the question indicates
that to ask it is wrong. Romanticism had no need to reflect reification, for
its aim was to express what was vital after the bourgeois revolution, viz.,
a new conception and a new expansion of the human personality, Promethean and
autonomous. This personal and sentimental expansion of a grand sensitivity proved
very soon to be illusory when confronted with social reality, but lost nothing
thereby of its universal human and cultural value. Let us remember that Romain
Rolland went to combat in behalf of socialism via Beethoven. Marx conducted
himself in the same way with Phidias or Shakespeare, even though the social
organization inhabited by these geniuses could scarcely have been pleasing to
him.

In other words, we are obliged
to keep track of the fate of human creation equally in the dimension of the
class struggle and in the dimension of the human personality, at the level of
human sociality and at the level of the artistic liberation of the personality.

Second, cultural phenomena transcend
the foundation-superstructure scheme and historical relativism in the sphere
of world history, by which we understand a continuous curve with all
its internal contradictions throughout the historical epochs up to the present.
Such a curve is assumed to be wholly natural where advances in science or technology
are concerned. It is considered entirely understandable and even inevitable
in these fields of endeavor for new discoveries to be linked together with the
older ones and for such new discoveries to multiply increasingly, with the general
curve of discoveries or cognition appearing in an exponential form, i.e., as
a curve with positive acceleration. Positivistic organicism, historical relativism,
and the theory of the rise and fall of cultures as worlds of their own are nevertheless
incapable of encompassing such a kind of progressive alteration with constant
upsurge within the bounds of their mode of thinking.

We know that estheticians are
opposed to the idea of progress in art, but we also know that they have in mind
in this connection solely the perfection of certain forms or the perfection
of the esthetic experience itself. In this sense, we truly cannot say that esthetic
expression actually advanced in terms of “the beautiful” and “the perfect” from
the neolithic caves to the classical Greeks and from the classical Greeks to
contemporary modernism. On the other hand, even if we have not advanced esthetically,
we have not necessarily failed to improve steadily in terms of the creative
act proper, in the discovery of creative potentialities, in the analysis
of expressional devices, in the discovery of the various laws under which dead
matter is configurated. We would not find it difficult to show that man has
advanced as steadily in art as he has in technology, which some so mystically
counterpose to art, forgetting that art is inseparable from craftsmanship.
Like the dance, primitive art is frequently incapable of esthetic error, but
is nevertheless wholly enslaved like primitive realism by a subject that has
not yet become the object of critical reflection and is entirely bound up with
a syncretic world of magic and mythology. Only with the Greeks did beauty begin
to be discovered as a separate object of experience and thereby as a separate
theme of human creativity. Only then were the laws of proportion, symmetry,
and rhythm discovered. Did not the Renaissance discover the laws of perspective
for the first time, just as the Baroque period was to discover light and shadow
as the medium of the spiritual existence of an object devoid of sheer mass?
And what of today’s discovery that “what is deserving of being depicted is not
the object but rather the impression which the object makes upon us” in the
form of impressionism, cubism, and abstract art? More careful analysis would
show us that we are constantly witnessing genuine discoveries in relation
to human modes of expression and to the way in which objects are represented
throughout the entire evolution of European art, and that such discoveries have
increasingly multiplied in modern times (we need only remind ourselves of contemporary
“applied art”), to the extent that the kind of exponential curve found by the
sociologists in the field of science and technology could easily be constructed
in the artistic realm as well.

There can be no doubt that the
cyclic phenomena of cultural upsurge and stagnation, of progressive élan
and decadency, amount to no more than a separate rhythm within a more general
and more universal process of change. For this reason, we obviously will not
have exhausted the meaning of a particular phenomenon by simply placing it within
the framework of a process of progress and decadence. We must instead interpret
such a phenomenon within the framework of the general process of historical
change, i.e., in terms of world history. For example, a phase of
decadence in bourgeois art set in with symbolism and impressionism in the light
of the earlier ideo-affective expansion of humaneness, yet the same phase no
less surely marks the beginning of one of the most fruitful periods of cultural
and artistic creativity in terms of the discovery of new potentialities and
in terms of the constant enrichment of human sensitivity and imagination. And
the development of human potentialities, the development of all the most diverse
and many-sided of human capabilities, should be considered the fundamental
law of historical evolution (cf. Marx).

Third, the historical relativism
of the theories of culture under discussion is incapable of explaining an extremely
significant phenomenon in the process of cultural change, viz., the many‑sided
complexity of historical determinism. Specifically, certain cyclic processes of change are totally exhausted in the course of a single
historical epoch, while certain other cyclic processes of change can
be said to transcend a given epoch. In other words, there are cyclic
processes of change within a given historical epoch (endogenous cyclic processes of change) and cyclic processes of change above a given
historical epoch (exogenous or transcyclic processes of change).
For example, the process of change in terms of world history can be conceived
as a constant uncovering and deepening of human expressional potentialities.
To illustrate this phenomenon, however, we must take up an example which is
close to us and can be easily understood.

In our Psychology of the
Bourgeois Lyric (Psihologiia gradjanske lirike, Zagreb, published
by Matica Hrvatska, 1952), we described a cyclic process of change that began
with romanticism and ended with surrealism. The ideo‑affective attitudes
that led in romanticism to an expansion of sympathy toward humanity and the
cosmos led in symbolism to stagnation and in surrealism to radical negation.
A dead end had eventually been reached, justifying those writers who reflected
deeply on this process of change and who arrived at the conclusion that the
surrealists must be “the last romantics”! The attempt to depict lettrisme
as an imitation of abstract art is a kind of intellectual weakness, for
such an attempt mistakenly identifies technology with humaneness, whether affirmed
or negated. To be sure, a new cycle of cultural change set in with the appearance
of impressionism. Impressionism comprised a certain amount of “technological
interest,” both in terms of thematic material (locomotives, the St.-Lazare railway
station, the Eiffel Tower) and in terms of procedures (spectrum analysis, complementary
colors, the granular fusion of colors, etc.), and we find something kindred
in the poetry of René Ghil and Paul Valéry. A certain constructivism and instrumentalism
had evolved. Since impressionism, this tendency has dominated modern art in
all varieties of expression up to and including contemporary abstract or concrete
art, electronic music, and lettrisme in poetry. This “technological interest,”
subordinated to a greater extent in the beginning to certain humanistic preoccupations,
has grown increasingly independent in the course of time, and recently even
dominates some areas of endeavor. However, with reliance on concrete space in
the field of architecture and in the manufacture of useful objects, this “technological
interest” is going to acquire a real foundation and is going to free itself
of its romanticist and metaphysical proclivities.

Abstract art, although closest
in time to surrealism, is immeasurably remote from it psychologically and is
incomparably far away from romanticism and in particular from the “night,” “hallucinatory,”
and “grotesque” varieties of romanticism. This circumstance only serves to confirm
the fact that the cycle is discontinuous and closed if we have the development
of the romanticist component in mind, yet continuous and open if we have the
“technological component” in mind. Is it not clear by now that a cycle in art
is already ending in bourgeois society? This society is necessarily continuing
with its technological and cultural potentialities, while the “technological
cycle” in art that derives its inspiration from science and technology will
necessarily be continuing apart from all limitations imposed by the class make‑up
of society, for which reason the resistance of socialist realism in some countries
to abstract art is as purposeless as it is futile and is bound to end in the
same way as have kindred attitudes toward modern architecture, urban planning,
and cybernetics.

We can draw the conclusion from
this example that courses of development and values with a multitude of meanings
and senses come to light within the bounds of a given historical epoch, like
all organic creations. While one conception or stylistic form is dying out,
another is already being born and is present to be able to continue along the
path of its own and uniquely different fate.

Fourth, these theories are not
capable of explaining the role of the unconscious in artistic creation,
especially in instances of stylistic change where the influence of a
kind of collective unconscious is of particular significance. Psychoanalysis
has succeeded in explaining the influence of the unconscious only in relation
to the content or theme of an artistic work, not in relation to stylistic changes.
What is involved at this point is the fact that the unconscious in creation
is not only a complex function of the intermediacy of experience in terms of
the symbolization, projection, or dramatization of specific materials, but also
a direct influence upon the very functional structure of the experience.

If we desire to defend the thesis that the evolution artistic
sensitivity from romanticism to surrealism comprises a closed cycle that has
been exhausted and resolved on the basis of its own premises, then we must take
the internal dynamics of this evolution into account. These internal
dynamics presuppose not only a change in specific experiential materials but
also certain functional changes in the creative imagination, in which the unconscious
plays a vital role as an intermediary. For example, we have already pointed
out that romanticism represents a certain expansion in sympathy in human and
cosmic terms, yet we also know that symbolism and impressionism mark a diminution
of this affective expansion due to a general or collective state of mind which
can be described as resignation. The question thus arises as to what the significance
and consequences of this diminution in the affective expansion may be.

So far as functional changes
are concerned, we are in a position to observe the course of two simultaneous
processes in symbolism. The first is the diminution of the humanistic expansion
along with the transferral of this expansiveness to the realm of the beautiful,
the disinterested, and the formalized. This is why the symbolists call themselves
“cultivators of form,” “stylists,” or “the dispassionate ones.” The second such
process involves the sensory or sensual component of the creative imagination,
which becomes stronger or more independent. The ideo‑affective
expansion that had taken place during the romantic era in the realm of humanism
withdrew in symbolism and impressionism to the level of sensual relations with
nature and things. Friedrich Hebbel was right in remarking that this sensual
expansion was based on a kind of “passive love” and on an ironic or Manichaean
stance toward reality, described so dramatically and so accurately by Baudelaire
and Nietzsche. The shift of the humanistic expansion to the realm of sensuality
occurred unconsciously, being much more the product of the general spirit of
the epoch than of any rational reflection on the part of an artistic creator.
And yet this change is the key to an understanding of essential changes in artistic
expression, for this diminution in the humanistic expansion gave rise to a whole
series of other characteristic changes in sensitivity, e.g., a feeling of intimacy
and presence, ambivalence of feeling, sensory plasticity, a tendency toward
synesthesia, hyperintellectualism in the creative process, and a return to the
past in its naive and childlike aspects. This metamorphosis in sensitivity has
resulted in corresponding changes in artistic style in such a way that an interdependence
can be said to exist between structural changes in sensibility and artistic
expression. We could also show a similar metamorphosis to have taken place in
the transition from symbolism to surrealism.

Fifth, if it is correct to say
that some cyclic processes transcend a given historical epoch, socioeconomic
arrangement, or class society, while others do not, then an important methodological
principle follows, viz., some contradictions within the bounds of a given
social system are resolved in the course of time, but other contradictions arise
to take their places. Some contradictions become simple differences under
the law of the progressive differentiation of society and culture, while other
differences become new contradictions. In other words, it is a mistake to make
use of such simple contradictions as those between materialism and idealism,
subjectivism and objectivism, progressivism and reaction, and the like, in the
interpretation of culture. We must instead follow the development of every established
contradiction to see whether it is being resolved in the course of time within
the bounds of a given social system or not. Marx had already noted in connection
with economic development that some contradictions are resolved within the bounds
of capitalism. We ought therefore to anticipate that such would be an even commoner
occurrence in the realm of culture, which is more autonomous and is distinguished
by a higher coefficient of individual factors. We are thus faced with a peculiar
dialectic that transforms contradictions into contrarieties and contrarieties
into contradictions. Let us attempt to illustrate with an example:

An extremely ferocious campaign
is being waged in some socialist countries today against abstract art as the
last, “most radical,” and most distorted, expression of bourgeois decadency
in art. This campaign takes into account only certain of the spiritualistic
speculations of the early Kandinsky, Malevich, and Mondrian. No consideration
is given in this campaign to the actual context and function of the art that
is involved, particularly in connection with the appearance of the Weimar Bauhaus
and with the analysis of the modern conception of space and pictorial matter.
Nor do these criticisms take note of the fact that abstract art protests against
misuse in the name of its concreteness. The real reason for this failure
of understanding is that this campaign and these criticisms are unaware of the
fact that a contradictory cultural situation, in the form of an attempt to flee
the concrete world, has undergone a transformation contrary to its own
original intentions by becoming involved in the concrete world and in the ecological
(urban‑planning) problems of this concrete world. Abstract art has thus
ceased to be a negation of any world, bourgeois, socialist, or whatever. On
the basis of contemporary spatial and pictorial concepts, abstract art has become
a part of the most real world possible; that is, it has become wholly neutral
so far as differences of class are concerned. In this way, abstract art may
equally be the concern of Catholics and Protestants, socialists and communists.
Against the wishes of its initiators, abstract art has become only “one among
others.” The most intelligent theoreticians of abstract art would not defend
its exclusiveness in the name of “progress,” going no further than to mention
abstract art as one possibility among many.

Sixth, modern cultural criticism
in general has not yet acquired the habit of examining the significance or sense
of cultural goods from the standpoint of the actual function of these goods
in relation to man. Abstract‑esthetic, ideological‑utilitarian,
or economic‑commercial criteria are commonly taken into consideration.
These criteria, which have a somewhat longer tradition in our civilization,
are easier to define. The problem of actual human needs and of determining the
values of cultural goods in relation to human needs remains open, although contemporary
social and psychological anthropology is beginning to touch on it on an increasing
scale, primarily in the form of criticism of contemporary industrial and capitalist
civilization in its extreme commercial and metropolitan forms.

Our objections to these theories
up to this point suggest that the determinism of cultural phenomena is far more
complex than it appears at first glance. In a very general way, it may be said
that the existence of differences in historical rhythms points the way to the
existence of three fundamental systems in the determinism of cultural
phenomena: society in its structuralism; the personality as a separately individualized
and universal system of functions and needs; and, finally, the cultural areas
proper with their own unique laws of development (science, philosophy, technology,
language, art, etc.). There is no dispute today among researchers into culture
about the existence of these three specific factors in cultural development.
The argument begins when we attempt a closer examination of the significance
and interrelations of particular systems. Our research is only now getting underway,
but it is already clear that the existence and operation of these three systems
will demand a polydeterministic interpretation of cultural evolution.

Seventh, if it is correct that
various cycles and rhythms of historical development exist and that these three
systems require a polydeterministic interpretation, then we are faced with the
problem of defining the methods of cultural research and cultural criticism
more accurately. Although space does not permit us to go into this problem,
let us at least point out that every onesided and simplified treatment of cultural
phenomena must be excluded. The problem likewise excludes any vulgar‑materialistic
limitation to the foundation‑superstructure scheme, any enclosure on the
part of positivistic organicism within an exclusive course of progress and decadency,
and any phenomenological reductionism to a universal basic process such as reification.

In what way ought we to approach
the analysis of cultural phenomena? Above all, no doubt, a phenomenological
survey of the totality of the phenomena in a given cultural‑historical
situation is in order. The phenomenological application of the category of totality
for purposes of distinguishing the essential from the inessential, the profound
from the superficial, and the fundamental from the secondary should naturally
be the first step in such research. Yet a panoramic review of this kind
will cease to be adequate the moment we ask ourselves the meaning of a given
phenomenon in terms of duration in time. The problem will then have arisen of
the complexity of the determinism of the given phenomenon—more profound study
will undoubtedly discover, behind the statics of phenomenology, an increasing
number of generic forms, which can be grasped only by means of functional-structural
analysis. Just as the structure of the cultural and social situation
has changed in the course of time, so also has the function of particular phenomena
changed, and along with it the significance of such phenomena in the life of
society and of individuals. The direction in which the functions, sense, and
values of particular phenomena are changing can be determined only by historical-comparative
study of the development of society and culture. In other words, these are
three different methodological standpoints which necessarily complement rather
than exclude each other. However, the mastery of these methodological viewpoints
entails a thorough acquaintance with actual social and cultural happenings.
Petty criticism and methodological onesidedness are commonly the offshoots of
insufficient knowledge concerning various fields of culture, concerning the
dependence of such fields of culture upon concrete social situations, and concerning
the place of such fields of culture in the general currents of historical change.
The superficiality which we encounter so often in this area in everyday criticism,
as well as in more serious discussions, results partly from inadequate study
of the cultural materials, but no less from a lack of the dialectical spirit
that is based equally on comprehensive intuition and the logical elaboration
of methodological procedures.